total war
nounEtymology Calque of German totaler Krieg, coined by Erich Ludendorff.
1
Warfare where all of a country's available resources, military as well as civilian, are employed.
- In the course of its crisis the young French Republic discovered or invented total war: the total mobilization of a nation's resources through conscription, rationing and a rigidly controlled war economy, and virtual abolition, at home or abroad, of the distinction between soldiers and civilians.1962, Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution. 1789-1848, page 67: